"Commentary from P.M. Carpenter"

May 31, 2016

In a press conference this morning, Donald Trump delivered his first Checkers speech — the first, be assured, of many to come; but rather than a smooth shellacking of his critics, Trump's was a characteristically vicious, vastly contradictory, and utterly vertiginous public meltdown.

It was hard to watch, impossible to apprehend, and evocative of almost any clinical paranoid except Tricky Dick, whose self-defensive artistry I now miss.

Trump's Checkers conference was an absolute disaster. Its pitiable gist, in Trump's words, was that Trump would get nothing but good press if the press would just stop giving him bad press, which was a galloping and I daresay downright awesome tautology.

The press is "so dishonest, so unfair," he said, in asking questions about, for instance, mysterious veterans donations. (Without the mystery, there would have been no questions.) He called ABC reporter Tom Llamas "sleazy," a "sleaze," among other insults leveled at those charged with covering his "presidential" campaign. Smart.

The legal system, too, is out to get him. The judge overseeing the Trump University lawsuit, he said, has been "very very unfair." The press, wouldn't you know it, has been unclear about this.

Trump also maintained — brace for a titanic mind-bender — that "I didn't want to have [take] credit" for raising millions of dollars (either $4 million, or $5 million, or $6 million, depending on … whatever) for veterans groups; that he had preferred that all of this be "private." These would be the millions that Trump raised in a debate-alternative publicity stunt on national television last January.

In addition (there was so much more, so "very very" much more), Trump spent considerable time punching down — at little Billy Kristol — which artful Tricky Dick knew never to do. He also spent more time trashing his fellow Republicans: Mitt Romney, again, was a "fool," and Gov. Susana Martinez was "not nice."

Trump also labeled Sen. Sanders "crazy Bernie" — which is a peculiar thing to say about a pol whose followers Trump wishes to acquire.

This was one bizarre press conference, even for Donald Trump. All it lacked was "I am not a crook"; well that, and every other bit of Nixon's paranoid artistry.

The Clinton camp is a bit sensitive about its Plan A strategy against Trump, lying, as it does, in the mimicking shadow of Obama's 2012 strategy against Romney. Clinton's summer offensive is straightforward in design and, notes Politico, "a little familiar": Trump is "too rich and out-of-touch to understand the problems facing average Americans. He’s hiding something in his tax returns. He’s a cold-blooded capitalist predator — and there’s a recording to prove it."

When queried on its conspicuous imitation of Obama's last battle plan, the "Clinton campaign shies from the parallel," writes Politico. The campaign goes on to "point out that the strategy is just one push in their multi-front assault on the real estate developer, one that also brands him as risky and xenophobic — something far worse than Romney."

I'm not quite sure that helps. "Risky" is precisely Trump's appeal to the maddened crowd — the populist swarm that believes executive prudence is some sort of craven sellout to the "establishment" and the "status quo" and all the other clichés that motivate an overwrought, overemotional electorate. As for "branding" Trump as xenophobic, he proudly does that on his own. Should The Donald morph into a Jesse Jackson rainbower in the general election, then stentorian reminders of his primary-season racism would of course be called for.

Otherwise, about the Clinton campaign's Plan A, I would broadly agree with "the architect of Obama's campaigns":

"It certainly has an economic dimension — exploitation of workers, use of cheap foreign labor, non-payment of taxes, etc. — aimed at challenging his claim to be a tribune of the middle class,” said David Axelrod..., echoing the sentiment of a handful of other Obama alums who warned that the strategy would only work if it was one part of a much broader offensive. "But it seems to me that the larger and more damaging attacks go to temperament. Do people want a guy this impulsive, reactive and volatile in the Oval Office, with life and death powers?"

Temperament, indeed; yet less the temperament of a life-and-death "loose cannon" (which, I think, was a rhetorical error that played into Trump's "risky" appeal) than the rawer temperament of a toddler. An early summer, looping-video blitz of nothing but Trump vividly ridiculing a reporter's severe disablement, of Trump repeatedly hiking up his pants and playing with his belt buckle (his anti-Carson shtick), of Trump screaming in rage that "I'd like to punch him in the face" — a blitzkrieging, early-summer ad that ends, simply, with the voice-over question: "Do you want a three-year-old in the Oval Office?"

Of course it could also be that a pricey summer ad blitz would be somewhat superfluous. Romney's chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, is one of the millions of readers of this blog. A couple weeks ago he emailed to ask if I had read The Gamble, by Sides and Vavreck. One of the book's conclusions, related Stevens, is that of a "contradiction." Obama campaign staffers possess a twofold insistence: that Romney was always behind and therefore the race was "static," but also that their summer slamming of Romney "changed the race. Both of these are hard to reconcile," observed Stevens.

I had not read The Gamble, so naturally I offered Stevens one of my uninformed opinions (which tend to be the most strongly held by political observers): Perhaps Obama's summer blitz merely shut down any potential Romney comeback.

At any rate, Clinton is in a position similar to Obama's of 2012. Once the detritus of Sandersism is dispatched, Trump will be behind in the polls and there he'll stay: the race will be static. For now, then, an on-air, rolling-thunder campaign against Trump might well be superfluous. Nonetheless, defining Trump now would shut down any outside chance of a fall comeback, and defining him — ridiculing him — as a toddler, it seems to me, is the way to go.

May 30, 2016

Speaking of ABC's "This Week," I thought it noteworthy on this American holiday of memorial honor that yesterday's panelist William Bennett, bestower of philosophical splendors such as The Book of Virtuesand The Moral Compass: Stories for a Life's Journey, reiterated that he supports …

Donald Trump.

Also noteworthy is that The Huffington Post factually, which is to say nonjudgmentally, ends every piece of reporting or commentary on Trump with:

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

William Bennett: on permanent holiday from human virtues and moral compasses.

We've all heard that shocker countless times in the past couple months, and I heard it last from the onerous Jonathan Karl, yesterday, on ABC's "This Week." What's happening here? What's her problem? Hillary still hasn't put away Bernie. Mr. Karl was more wordily expansive, as he enfolded the shocking catchphrase in a more immediate and narrower context: "Despite being just 73 delegates away from clinching the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton still hasn't put away Bernie Sanders in California, where the race is now statistically tied." Karl's definition of "statistically tied" was also more expansive. According to RealClearPolitics' average, Clinton leads in California by 8 points.

No matter. The shocking interior of Karl's observation was there for all to marvel at — again: Hillary Clinton, avatar of establishmentarianism, still hasn't put away the old socialist, Bernie Sanders. What gives?

Perhaps I'm a bit slow, but it was only upon hearing the onerously predictable Jonathan Karl repeat the shocking catchphrase that the thought occurred: For months, we've had this backwards. The tedious "narrative" should have been, and should be, Why hasn't Bernie Sanders put away Hillary Clinton?

After all, Hillary never promised to ignite a sweeping political revolution, one in which We The People — who, presumably, include Democrats voting in Democratic primaries — would challenge the wicked establishment and heave the scurrilous money changers from the Beltway Temple. Such was Bernie's vision, and his conceit. Tens of millions of Americans had had it, he insisted, with the status quo, the establishment, the system — all the wretched, business-as-usual mealy-mouthedness of (at best) phlegmatic incrementalists who were content to watch Americans bathe in a sewer of political unresponsiveness.

Given half a chance, averred Bernie, these disillusioned, borderline-hopeless Americans would rise up en masse, they would throw themselves a revolutionary party, they would unite in solidarity and swamp the old bulls and bitches who had for so long betrayed The American Dream. All they needed was a truth-teller, a visionary, a Man of The People to lead them. And Bernie was, of course, that man.

The $27 demagogue can't even conquer the Democratic primaries; he can't even persuade the center-left. Whither, then, his political revolution and its insurrectionist majoritarian masses, whom Bernie assured us were seethingly awaiting the opportunity to throw off the corrupt establishment? Why has Sen. Sanders, paladin of the real change most Americans are demanding, been unable to put away Secretary Clinton, that odious voice of same-old, same-old?

May 29, 2016

This morning, on CBS News' "Face the Nation," Bernie Sanders stressed that "for me right now, I continue to focus on how we can rebuild a disappearing middle class, deal with poverty, guarantee health care to all of our people as a right." Vulturishly circling those words were a few other words from Sanders:

The Inspector General just came out with a report, it was not a good report for Secretary Clinton. That is something that the American people, Democrats and delegates are going to have to take a hard look at…. [T]hey will be keeping it in mind. I don't have to tell them that. I mean everybody in America is keeping it in mind, and certainly the superdelegates are.

The point that I'm going to make to the superdelegates, many of whom again came on board before I was in the race, came on board Clinton's campaign, is, 'Your job is to make sure Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly. You have got to determine, based on 100 different factors, which candidate is the strongest candidate to defeat Trump.' If you look at every poll done in the last six weeks, that candidate is Bernie Sanders.

So much for Sanders' revolutionary "focus" on the middle class, poverty, and health care.

His Campaign (see below) is manifestly of the conventional sort now, of the lower Nixonian sort. Sanders' cynical reminder that "I don't have to tell" the American people just how ungood for Clinton was the inspector general's report compels little but eye-rolling. From there he moved on to the raw, conventional politics of seizing the nomination via Nixonian speciousness: Clinton's numbers are hurting only because Sanders is dismembering the otherwise unified opposition to Trump.

Meanwhile, Sanders continues to wage the pettiest of wars with the DNC. His latest offensive is aimed at "remov[ing] Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank as the chairmen of two Democratic National Convention Standing Committees." In a letter to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee's co-chairs, Bernie Sanders gripes as only the infinitely paranoid Jeff Weaver can gripe that "Governor Malloy and Mr. Frank have both been aggressive attack surrogates for the Clinton campaign. Their criticisms of Senator Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the Senator and his Campaign."

Note the un-capitalization of Hillary's "campaign" in childish contrast to Bernie's "Campaign." Bernie's campaign, you see, is more than that — it's a Movement that transcends mere movements.

It's also a movement (capitalization optional) whose reason for being is now singular: pure internal politics.

I can't speak for others, but I, for one, have forgotten what other justification there is for the Sanders campaign. His stump speech, ostensibly designed to "focus" on poverty etc., is a mind-numbing, mechanical assemblage of one-sentence platitudes … pause … applause. There is no rhetorical flow, no unifying coherence, no nothing but populist drumbeats awaiting rimshots, which even his auditors have tired of delivering. As Atlantic's Molly Ball reported last week: "As Sanders gave his usual 75-minute consciousness-raising diatribe in Santa Monica … people began to stream off the field. By the time he got to the climactic line—'In fact, we need a political revolution!'—the whole back half was empty, and the crowd was practically too sparse to give the requisite answering roar."

The Sanders Campaign is now a Bunker campaign — one drowning in howls of betrayal and firing off eleventh-hour dispatches to disgusted party officials. His is a campaign focused entirely on internal, undemocratic politics — the absolute antithesis of what The Movement was supposed to be. The movement never possessed the populist juice that Bernie imagined in his febrile, revolutionary mind, and now he's reduced to the unsightly pettiness of a two-bit ward heeler. This, to repeat Ms. Ball, is how Bernie's revolution ends.

May 28, 2016

Perhaps unwittingly (though I suspect intentional female mischief), the NY Times' Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman have, this morning, reopened a bloody etymological war between us cousins. It's always the incestuous conflicts that are the most uncivil, hence I was rocked not only by the suddenness but the chilling perilousness of Parker & Haberman's assault, which lies — they'll claim innocently, no doubt — in this bloodier-than-bowshot passage in "Donald Trump’s Campaign Stumbles as It Tries to Go Big":

Mr. Trump has shown himself to be a masterly communicator, and his instincts, especially in identifying the issues that will animate voters, are shrewd.

Well! Good God, women, is the carnage inherent in that pregnant word and its historically infamous usage of so little concern to you? Do you think international war a game? Some frivolous manner of manly honor to be settled on a bloodless field of battle? You think it amusing, do you, to so casually drop masterly rather than masterful in your correspondence, knowing — as you should have known — that for years upon years men have lost their wits as well as no little etymological blood over the violence of difference between them?

I was appalled, appalled I tell you, to so rudely encounter "masterly communicator." Oh, as noted, Parker & Haberman will claim innocence as they fan themselves on the Times' veranda. Wily are the ways of females and ink. But ladies, I assure you there is nothing amusing about the centuries-old conflict between our refined cousins the Brits and us rustic colonials — a conflict that, over the difference between masterly and masterful, has but agreeably smoldered since 1926. Merely smoldered, that is, until your little "innocent" tease this morning.

I raced to the dispatches from the etymological front, my Merriam-Webster (10th collegiate ed.), that defender of Yankeeisms. And there, under the entries of masterful and usage, the blood is spilling: "Some commentators [a wicked non-emphasis on 'some'] insist that the use of masterful should be limited to sense 1 ['inclined … to play the master'] in order to preserve a distinction between it and masterly. The distinction is a modern one, excogitated by a 20th century pundit in disregard of the history of the word…. Sense 2 of masterful ['having … the power and skill of a master'], which is slightly older than the sense of masterly intended to replace it, has continued in reputable use all along; it cannot rationally be called an error." In other words, the Yankees downplay the distinction.

The scorned, "irrational" 20th century pundit is, of course, Britain's Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933), of Fowler's Modern English Usage. My 3rd edition of it (1996: 1st ed., 1926) opens its "masterful, masterly" entry with the terrifying rumblings of etymological war: "There is a problem here which remains unresolved." Continues Fowler's, "In BrE more than in AmE, and in serious writing rather than in the sports pages of newspapers [take that!], masterly is the standard word for the 'skilful' sense, and masterful for the 'domineering' sense. It cannot be denied, however, that, much as one would wish it otherwise, the unconventional sense of masterful to mean 'skilful' turns up frequently and seems for the present ineradicable…. [In] good writing, masterful still emerges as the word to be used of a domineering person."

Damn right. I'm a loyalist; I'm with the Mother Country and her Queen's English on this one. The Navigation Acts may have been a bit overbearing, but only a dizzy, trifling warmonger — two of them, in this instance — would so premeditatedly, indiscriminatingly deploy domineering Trump as a "masterly communicator" instead of a masterful one, and thus reopen a bloody and ancient wound.

May 27, 2016

"The party’s frustrations are boiling over," reports Politico. For at least some Senate Democrats, "Bernie Sanders' latest gambit — challenging Donald Trump to a debate to cap all debates — is the last straw."

This observation is immediately followed by the starkest demonstration of it: "Bullshit," says West Virginia's Sen. Joe Manchin. Sanders' challenge to Trump "confirms what we’ve been saying," continues Manchin. "Why would you expect Bernie should be considerate or be nice or be working to bring everyone together? Why? He’s not a Democrat."

Sanders does has a few allies on the debate-stunt front. "A minority of Democratic lawmakers … said they’d be fine with Sanders going toe-to-toe with Trump on TV, if only to unmask the Republican nominee as a false advocate for working people."

I'm unsure of what these minority thinkers are thinking, or if they're thinking at all. Sanders' stunt could easily backfire. Rather than portraying Trump as a false advocate for working people, Trump could effectively paint Sanders (and by extension, the Democratic nominee) as a confiscatory commie. I can already hear The Donald greeting "Comrade Bernie" and frequently interrupting with, "What was that, Fidel Sanders? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear amid all your Stalinization of America, which you wish to enslave within your ghoulish, big-government, heavily taxing schemes."

Trump excels at such "conversation"-dominating rubbish, while Sanders mostly excels at looking indignant, compulsively pointing his finger, and begging the moderator for some equal-time justice. Without mussing his perfectly coiffed hair, The Donald could have Bernie's standing on end.

Afterward — once Hillary is elected with much lower-than-possible turnout and thus rather disappointing Democratic congressional gains — there wouldn't be a Dirksen Building basement deep enough for Bernie's new Senate office.

Two terms as president may not have disabused Obama of his arc-of-justice idealism..., but they have forced upon him at least one policy of hardheaded, indeed hardhearted, realism [the containment of China]….

There’s no idealism in containment. It is raw, soulless realpolitik. No moral arc. No uplifting historical arrow. In fact, it is the same damn thing all over again, a recapitulation of Truman’s containment of Russia in the late 1940s….

He thus leaves a double legacy. His arc-of-justice aspirations, whatever their intention, leave behind tragic geopolitical and human wreckage. Yet this belated acquiescence to realpolitik, laying the foundations for a new containment, will be an essential asset in addressing this century’s coming central challenge, the rise of China.

I don’t know — no one knows — if history has an arrow. Which is why a dose of coldhearted realism is always welcome. Especially from Obama.

To fully exploit the pleasure of reading Krauthammer's column you'll need to overlook his disapproving, somewhat unintelligible conflation of liberal internationalists and neoconservatives as "idealists" of a "comforting delusion" (the arc of a just, moral universe) rejected by "realists" — which? I gather? is Krauthammer's attempt? to remove himself? from the neocons' embarrassed ranks? Who the hell knows.

Instead, the salience of his column — the wickedly gratifying pleasure to be derived from it — is that the enemy (Obama) of Charles' enemy (Trump) must now be remade into something of a friend.

Only Donald Trump could have accomplished the once-unimaginable apostasy of Mr. Krauthammer.

Nonetheless I'm proud of you, Charles, though my pride leads ineluctably to fearing for you. The boys at the yacht club may well revoke your membership. This sort of thing just isn't done.

I have simply got to get myself into the rackets … either the racket of focus-grouping — "My intensive grilling of 12 likely voters seated on folding chairs revealed that Hillary Clinton is seen as 'untrustworthy'; now, do you hand or mail me a check?" — or the racket of political "image crafting," whose breezy artistry is revealed by Paul Manafort to HuffPost's Howard Fineman — "One [challenge] is to make the American people look at [Donald Trump] and say, 'He can fill the chair.'" This challenge is met, in part, by bilking The Donald $200,000 a month (or whatever, I'm flexible) for offering advice he'll ignore. "You don’t change Donald Trump,” said Manafort in a truism that, logically enough, holds for most anyone. "You don’t 'manage' him," added Manafort, even though managing him (or whomever) is the cardinal task of image crafting.

When I say the art of "image crafting" is breezy, by that I mean one merely sets intellectual integrity — all of it — to the winds. That's the personal challenge of this racket, unless of course one is already sociopathically inclined to advise "foreign tyrants," as Mr. Manafort is, and has. However for $1.2 million dollars — six months worth of offering unheeded advice — I just might be up to it. Rationalizing the seedy is one of humanity's less appealing attributes, but it pays well. And rationalizing outrageous pay from some seedy buffoon who isn't going to take my advice anyway? For fuck's sake, as Nate Silver would put it, let my self-canceling image crafting begin.

My guiding professional template, as I'm sure you've guessed, would be the magnificent Mr. Manafort — the absolute Platonic Ideal of intellectual disingenuity. His sit-down with HuffPost's Fineman is a marvel of otherworldly verbal sleaze, all in the service of crafting the wholly imaginary for an uncraftable candidate. Post-integrity-trashing, the only trick, I gather, is not to laugh.

Whom might The Donald desire as a running mate? We can, most likely, rule out a woman or any person or color — since choosing either one, said Manafort, "would be viewed as pandering, I think." Insert rimshot here. Manafort added that Trump "needs," as a running mate, "an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do." OK, so Dick Cheney is available.

As for Trump's wretched unfavorability among women, Manafort insisted that “Our numbers even now are not that far out of whack…. Hillary is the one who’s got a gender gap." Hispanics? "The national polls are distorted"; what's more, Trump doesn't need two-fifths of the Hispanic vote to win the White House, as every conscious psephologist says he will. (Trump currently polls a catastrophic one-fifth of the Hispanic vote.)

"Does [Trump] know enough?" asked Manafort. "Yes," he answered, "because he knows he has more to learn. And he is constantly doing that" — not, heaven forfend, by reading briefing papers, but by "read[ing] the newspapers, and he talks on the phone and to office visitors in a never-ending stream. You’re sitting there in his office and you realize that he is constantly picking up stuff as he goes."

"Stuff" is one of those vastly interpretable words used by professional image crafters who haven't the vaguest idea of what in God's name their candidate is learning, if anything.

Oh, and talk of past or lingering GOP divisions was and remains "all B.S.," all "overblown." And the "only people who want [to see Trump's] tax returns are the people who want to defeat him." In that last statement there might be, at long last, some truth. What Manafort left unsaid was that the people who want to defeat Trump constitute the great majority of the American electorate.

But what does image-crafter Paul Manafort care? Like the seedily buffoonish Donald Trump, he's got his.

May 26, 2016

The real last chance here is with Mitt Romney, who has said "no" but who I think is thinking seriously about it. He is a very serious person, he really knows that Trump should not be president of the United States. He strongly believes that Hillary Clinton should not be president of the United States…. I think he thinks someone should [run as a third-party candidate]. And I think that he thinks that maybe he is the right person to do it. He has the national stature and name ID, access to resources.

I was just now enjoying — immensely enjoying — Molly Ball's Bernie-monitoring Atlantic piece, "This Is How a Revolution Ends," the assorted hows of which she summarizes upfront: "idealism tested" and "optimism drained" and "hope turned to bitterness." This, as noted, was pleasurable reading for me — a superb journalist's dispatch on the fanatical core of Sandersism, full of delusions, denialism, pomposity, paranoia, hate, childish clichés and, above all, an "impervious[ness] to reality."

But damn Molly Ball for inserting a link to one Seth Abramson, assistant professor of English (University of New Hampshire) and never-say-die-or-dead Sanders disciple. Seth's defiant, "Bernie Sanders has won this election" piece in the Huffington Post, which I survived only by scanning it, might very well give me nightmares. Here's a taste (you'll have to work to keep in mind that this taste is in support of Bernie Sanders):

The problem I’ve had — that many I know have had — with experimental writing in the postmodern era is that it is deconstructive. What it shows us is only that things cannot and do not hang together over time; that we ourselves are contingent creations living in spaces that are always in the process of being compromised because they, too, are contingent. Deconstruction is thrilling because it gives the artist a sense of having exposed something, and her audience the feeling of having entered a pedagogical space in which something previously hidden is now open to view. But what we find, over time, is that having hidden things revealed to us over and over again by art finally has only the effect of reminding us that life is a many-chambered shell deliberately foreclosed to us by unseen forces. It reminds us, too, that the intentions and perceptions of other people are by and large hidden from us in — the real torture — plain sight. I see you looking at me and I wonder what you think, and I call that wonder mystery; I walk through the world every day experiencing that sensation again and again and I soon find myself calling it agony instead….

Cynical subjectivities, palimpsestic ironies, deconstructive framings, the jailbreak of iterability, so much fragmentation, cries of unavoidable degradation — these hallmarks of the postmodern no longer gesture at anything; the gesture itself has, for a great many of us, swallowed whatever it was that was worth looking at (or for) in the first place. The result is an existential despair no one can healthily live in for long.

You began chuckling, didn't you. Your chuckling commenced almost instantly — probably right around "contingent creations living in spaces that are always in the process of being compromised" — and then exploded into derisive howling when (if) you finally reached "the jailbreak of iterability."

What's the point of Seth's pseudo-intellectualized mumbo-jumbo? Well, my friends, it is every bit as profound:

Not only do I fully support and endorse Senator Sanders’ agenda, I see in his political methodology evidence of the metamodern, just as I know for certain when I hear Clinton’s cynical incrementalism that I am in the presence of a postmodern political ethos.

He's also in the grip of delusions, denialism, etc., etc., and, above all, an "impervious[ness] to reality" (see: cynical incrementalism). All of which simply means, to Prof. Abramson, that "Bernie Sanders has won this election." Now that's the revolutionary spirit that won't end; or, as any first-rate political strategist would put it, a rejection of existential despair over palimpsestic ironies.

I'm a bit skeptical that the electorate's choice of the next leader of the free world will hang on the horrifying fact that "Even though department policy mandated throughout Clinton's tenure at Foggy Bottom that day-to-day operations should be conducted via authorized means, the IG report found no evidence that the secretary of state 'requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server.'"

Nor should it. Hillary's email "scandal" boils down to a high official's indifference to confused, bureaucratic fastidiousness. Such indifference — is it not? — is the conservative spirit. (I once worked with a libertarian fellow who had access to an "official" U.S. government "top secret" stamp, and he enjoyed plastering its red imprint all over the personal correspondence he was placing in the U.S. mails. This caused no end of convulsing frenzy within the hyperbureaucratic mailroom clerk who had to witness my friend's little rebellions against bureaucratic rules and regulations.)

During her tenure, State Department employees were told that they were expected to use approved, secure methods to transmit information that was sensitive but unclassified, or SBU. If they needed to transmit SBU information outside the department’s network, they were told to ask information specialists for help. The report said there is no evidence that Ms. Clinton ever asked, "despite the fact that emails exchanged on her personal account regularly contained information that was marked as SBU."

Again, the "U" in "SBU" stands for unclassified, stuff one could read most any day in the Washington Post or New York Times (both of which have, over the years, published classified material — and good for them).

Of greater enjoyment, however, is the Post's Oh-by-the-way nugget grudgingly dropped into its editorial conclusion of absolute outrage:

The department’s email technology was archaic. Other staffers also used personal email, as did Secretary Colin Powell (2001-2005), without preserving the records. But there is no excuse for the way Ms. Clinton breezed through all the warnings and notifications.

"My worry is not that Trump will lose the general election," commented a "top Republican official" during the recent unpleasantness (or charm) of the GOP's primary carnage. "It’s that he could win."

The official's worry stemmed, no doubt, from the creeping horror of what Robert Reich has labeled Trump's "anti-politics": the plutocrat's agronomic virtuosity in sowing "hostility and suspicion" among the grumpy proletariat. Trump, observed Reich, is neither left nor right nor ultimately center; he's merely a paranoid bundle of malice which connects exceptionally well with latent discontent. Searing national divisions — not cheerful unity — could carry Trump to the White House.

Such has been the theory, the speculation, the "worry."

But gentlemen, your worries are already over — or should be. In fact, one wonders what ever upset you so. For while Trump's "anti-politics" are unquestionably paranoid and malicious and appealing to the anarchic element of the American electorate, they are — unmodulated — also massively self-destructive. And Mr. Trump is anything but modulated. Indeed he can't modulate, for that would betray the very maliciousness that made him so popular among the grumpy.

Trump needn't be "defined" by the Clinton campaign. He is ruinously defining himself — and this week, he has done what may be the most brilliant job of it yet. In "unleash[ing] a blistering assault" against New Mexico's Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, Trump compelled none other than "The Hammer," Tom DeLay, to remark: "I have no other word for it: it's just stupid politics … and it just blows my mind. Where is he going to get his coalition to win?"

Was a blistering assault on the popular Hispanic chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association enough for Trump for one week? Not quite. On the following day, yesterday, in Anaheim, Calif., he decided, in an almost inexplicable display of supererogatory stupidity, to lavish yet more scorn on Mitt Romney (a "choker" who "walks like a penguin"), as well as on "low-energy" Jeb Bush. However choking or unenergetic they are, both gentlemen still have their constituencies. To insult them after he's won the primaries is "just stupid politics."

One may call them "anti-politics" if one wishes, but "anti-smarts" is more fitting. Still, Trump's strategic imbecility was, is, and shall remain indispensable to his campaign. He can't be presidential since being sordidly unpresidential is what got him where he is, and it's what will retain his anarchic element of the American electorate — which isn't anywhere close to 50 percent.

May 25, 2016

I really need to get out more, or, at the very least, get myself on more forwarded email lists. I mean, indirectly from the NY Times, there's this valuable intel which I had utterly missed:

Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s former chief of staff, said Mr. Trump was making common cause with "the lunatic fringe," citing his willingness to appear on the radio show of [Infowars' Alex] Jones, who has claimed that Michelle Obama is a man.

Now there, that latter part, is a story that should be pursued "bigly." I've been living in ignorance.

The State Department inspector general concluded that Hillary Clinton did not comply with the agency’s policies on records, according to a report released to lawmakers on Wednesday….

The watchdog’s findings could exact further damage to Clinton’s campaign, and they provide fresh fodder for Trump, who has already said he will go after Clinton for the email scandal "bigly" [one of The Donald's 'best words'].

I'm unconcerned about the email "scandal." It will go away, just as soon as Hillary is indicted for the murder of Vince Foster.

The NYT's Thomas Edsall explains to befuddled talking heads how "a candidate with as much baggage as Trump [can] be neck-and-neck with one of the most admired, best credentialed and most broadly experienced nominees in the history of the Democratic Party":

The unrelenting assault from the right and the left on her integrity and competence, conducted both by Republicans and by her opponent for the Democratic nomination, appears to have taken a toll. Clinton has been under attack from the right throughout her 25 years in the national arena. The Sanders critique from the left has served to deepen her negative ratings.

In other words (unwritten by Edsall), Hillary's increasing deficits are almost entirely the result of Bernie's attacks, not the right's, since, as Edsall himself observes, the right has been flinging the same malicious garbage at Mrs. Clinton for 25 "unrelenting" years.

The reigning political cliché these days is "asymmetrical warfare," and it's applied exclusively to the right, which is to say, Trump. Yet the more authentic asymmetry lies on Bernie's side; his internal attacks have been far more damaging to Hillary than the right's, whose external attacks are essentially superfluous: they persuade no one but the already persuaded.

In brief, Hillary is hurting because of Bernie. Period … pretty much.

What befuddles me about Edsall's column is this ensuing passage: "As we near the close of the primary season, Hillary Clinton has somehow succeeded in turning the election into a close contest that she could conceivably lose."

The pronoun is wrong, and it's wrong for the very reasons Edsall just finished explaining (somewhat). Hillary hasn't succeeded in rendering this a close election (for now). Bernie has.

"It’s not clear how [Paul] Ryan, who said that he wasn’t interested in a 'fake unification' of his party, would choreograph an endorsement after his initial public reluctance," reports Bloomberg Politics.

But, according to Ryan "confidants," choreograph an endorsement of Trump he will, and he will soon — because, paradoxically, only the irrational party understands the importance of rationalizing a national campaign with due haste. Swift and fake unification beats "messy," protracted, internal yet open debates any day — which is what the rational party seems so irrationally hellbent on staging.

Over the years, countless are the times that I and others have observed: If there's a way for Democrats to fuck this up, they'll find it. And finding it they are, lopping off months of the party's reunification so essential to the highest conceivable task in American politics: extinguishing the rotting plague of Trumpism.

Rather than annihilating the imminent threat of 2016, what are Democrats doing? Debating the wisdom of superdelegates, in 2020. This is called "idealism."

Progressive idealism once held a noble seat at the Democratic table, just as democratic socialism reigned obscurely as the party's ultimate ideological template. Now they're a joke; they're both jokes — and rather sick jokes at that. Therein lies the greater paradox of 2016: The idealistic avatar of contemporary democratic socialism, Bernie Sanders, is inflicting more harm on The Cause than reactionary depravities ever could.

As is true with most revolutions, Sanders is dishonoring his through ever-increasing fanaticism. "[Democratic socialism] never is more admirable than when it accepts changes that it disapproves, with good grace, for the sake of a general conciliation," wrote the conservative political philosopher Russell Kirk in 1953 — except, of course, the brackets contained "Conservatism," not "Democratic socialism." Nonetheless his observation applies with validity either way.

American democratic socialism has always retained its intellectual dignity by gracefully accepting inescapable defeat, for the sake of a general conciliation. It has not stomped its feet in infantile rage at the "unfairness" of it all, nor, quite appealingly, has it claimed a monopoly on wisdom. The root of "pluralism" is plural; others get to play in the sandbox.

Still, today's defeats are no barrier to victories tomorrow. American politics is a long, long game — as FDR knew, as LBJ knew, as Barack Obama knows. In a pluralistic democracy one takes one's hits gracefully, and for the sake of a general conciliation.

Even the comically Very Serious Personage of Paul Ryan understands this, for Christ's sake. But Bernie is a bit too busy to grasp it, what with his preoccupation of infantilizing and fanaticizing democratic socialism.

May 24, 2016

Krugman has a useful blog post that breaks down the Sanders movement into five basic constituencies, most of which are self-explanatory: 1.Genuine idealists; 2.Romantics; 3.Purists; 4.Clinton-Derangement Syndrome victims; and 5.Salon des Refuses ("a small group in number,… policy intellectuals who have for whatever reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic establishment, and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big time"). With absolutely no empirical data to support my position, I tend to think #2's population is the largest:

This kind of idealism [romanticism] shades over into something that’s less about changing society than about the fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement. (Those of us who were students in the 60s and early 70s very much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially for those who didn’t understand delegate math – it felt like a wonderful joy ride, the scrappy young on the march about to overthrow the villainous old. But there’s a thin line between love and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness, with angry claims that they were being cheated.

It's the evolved, outsized irrationality of today's Sanders Movement that leads me to suspect the Romantics' overrepresentation. What began as an idealistic lark morphed over the months into a seeming possibility, whose defeat only a massive betrayal could explain. With stunning rapidity, Sanders (cynically) and his followers (authentically) adopted the fascinating outlook of the Paranoid Style: only a vast network of the wickedly conspiratorial could have thwarted the otherwise unstoppable grandeur of Sandersism.

Within the span of mere weeks, the Movement Romantics transmogrified into crackpots. Such is the fate of most political revolutions; Sanders's was simply accelerated.